Saturday Scrappin'

Well, its Saturday and as usual I can be found down in my scrap room and the paper is flying! :) I finished a new layout and I thought I would post it along with some of my other scrappy creations this week.

I had a lot of fun creating with this bright and funky travel line from American Crafts. The elements were perfect for these photos at the beginning of our little road trip in Florida. :)

These are just the miscellaneous photos from our days spent at the beach. I really like the fun bright colors that are in these papers from Making Memories and I used a technique called masking and some glimmer mist to create the hibiscus flower and date on the page.  :)

These are photos of Emily and I on the OceanWalk at Daytona Beach. I love this page for so many reasons: the photos are really bright and fun and I was able to find the perfect patterned paper to match my layout. I also had a lot of fun playing with my Cricut and new Life Is a Beach and Don Juan cartridges to create a lot of the page elements.

A Busy and Productive Labor Day Weekend

This weekend was filled with lots of fun, laughter, creativity, relaxation, friends, and family. :)

On Saturday, I helped my dad get landscaping bricks for our house.  I then spent the rest of the evening down in the basement creating, cleaning, and organizing. The basement is definately starting to look much better. Now I just need to go through my stuff and get rid of some of the things I know I will never use. That's the difficult part because I don't like to get rid of stuff...

Sunday was just a bit crazy. It started with church at Pathway, which was great and I got to see lots of my friends. Then that afternoon we headed to my aunt and uncle's for a cookout, but I left before they actually ate. I did get to see my cousins Holly and Mike and their sweet little one, Kayla. :)  I then headed to my friends' Mike and Bethaney's anniversary party. It was a blast even though it did rain. And Emily and I went around and took some great photos with cool old farm backdrops...I swear it is one of the best places to take portraits...cool backgrounds to give visual interest.

Monday was creativity central. Emily and Angela came over and we spent almost all day creating in scrappy goodness.  I finished 3 layouts just that day! Woo-hoo! Gotta love being creative. :)

When the afternoon storms ended, Emily and I headed down to the beach. It was amazing to see the difference there after the storms moved through. There were really deep spots near the shore and further out it was only ankle deep. In the photo, Emily is standing about 25 feet from shore and it is still that shallow. Also there were shells everywhere!

Pictures from our hotel in Daytona Beach. I created this for a sketch challenge over at Scrapbook.com and I had a lot of fun creating this.  I love this line from KI Memories and it was perfect for these photos.

Just a cute photo of Emily and I at the beach. I used lots of fun accents on here. I colored the Heidi Swapp ghost flower with Alcohol inks and then rubbed stickles on the back of it to give it shimmer. :)

Picture that my friend took of me just looking out at the ocean. It totally wasn't planned so I was surprised and happy when I got home and uploaded my photos. I used a poem for my journaling called "Ocean Breeze" frim Patrick A. Whistler.

"I love to feel the ocean's breeze as it gently touches my face
To feel the water's warm caress as it moves from place to place
To watch the sunrise, to feel it's warmth
As night turns into day, to see the wonder of it all, the miracle of God's way
To feel the sand beneath my feet as I walk and contemplate
And know the footprints left by me will soon be washed away
So soothing is the ocean's call, so gentle, yet so strong
To feel deep down inside my soul that this is where I belong
To know that I, just like the waves, will move from day to day
And yet return without a doubt, another time, another way
The song the ocean to me mere words cannot describe
But in my heart I know the truth, it's steady as the tide
So I will come to walk the sand and spend my time in peace
Understanding all the while the gift God gave to me."
I totally love what the poem speaks of and it truly reflects who I am and what I was thinking about at that time. :)

Scrapping Projects and a Bridal Shower

Well it has been a fabulous weekend! It began with heading to a local bar to hang out with some of my teacher friends on Friday afternoon. My drink of choice? Pepsi, of course. :)  I really enjoyed catching up with everyone and finding out how school was going for all of them and what fun and interesting things everyone was up to this summer. As I was sitting there, I realized that the one thing I miss the most about my job is seeing all of my friends and co-workers on a regular basis.  A job is not just the work you do, it is also the relationships/friendships that you form and the interactions that you have with these people every day that make a job worthwhile. Afterwards I came home and finally finished a layout that I had been struggling with for 2 days. I really love how it turned out. The colors are so bright and fun and I got to use my new blue glittery embossing powder from American Crafts which totally adds to the fun feeling of the page.

On Saturday,  I woke up later than usual (11:00 a.m.) and dad and I headed out to get gas for the mower and lunch too. It is a fun little ritual that we sometimes do to make Saturdays more fun. Then we headed home and I ended up beating him at a game of Skip-Bo pretty badly.  I really thought I was going to lose but all at once I went on a huge streak and played half of my pile of cards in one turn.  :)  Dad and I really love the game and play at least once a week.  We actually wore out our first deck of cards and are now breaking in our new deck. Then Renee came over and she and I ended up going shopping because her car was in the shop and she needed to run some errands. So we ended up in Archivers and I now have an interview on Tuesday morning to work there. I am still not 100% sure that I want to go back to working retail again, but I need a way to pay the bills and sustain my little "scrapping addiction", so here goes. I came home and worked on another layout and had a lot of fun pulling out tons of flowers and embellishments to add to this layout to make it really stand out. I also played with glimmer mist on the chipboard letters and love how it turned out.  The colors are so soothing and the embellishments frame the pictures perfectly too. :)

Then today we had Renee's bridal shower. I can't believe her wedding is just 34 days away! It has come so quickly. Anyways, the shower was fabulous. Maria and Amy put a lot of hard work into making this shower simply fabulous. Everyone said the food was fabulous and everyone felt welcome and at home too. We visited with friends and family, laughed at the trivia about Zach and Renee, and introduced ourselves with silly foods such as jello, dates, and "pam"cakes. :) Renee got a lot of great gifts, including a popcorn popper, kitchen gadgets, and a domino set from me so they can enjoy one of our family's favorite games, Mexican Train Dominoes.

I have also been working on some other scrapbooking projects over the past few weeks. These are some of my favorites. This top one was a quick and easy one for me and I had fun using these beach themed products from Making Memories "Great Escape" line.  The bright colors and bold patterns were perfect for these pictures of Emily and I enjoying the local cuisine in Daytona Beach. I also used a fun technique to create the orange scalloped circle.  See the instructions below to recreate the look on your next layout. :)

I used my medium-sized EK Success corner punch and my Cricut Expression to create this fun look. First I die-cut a circle out of cardstock that was 1/2 inch larger than I wanted the scalloped circle to be.

 I removed the corner guides from my punch and lined up the notches on the punch with the edge of the circle and punched my first scallop.

 I then slid the punch over and lined the left side of the punch and the right side of the punched scallop up and punched again to create the next scallop.

I continued this all the way around the circle to create my scalloped circle.

If your punches don't line up at the end like mine did, just take a pair of scissors and snip the paper in a scallop shape like I did or cover that part of the circle with an embellishment.

I completed the layout below with some of my beach pictures. I really loved the colors in the ride so I found patterned papers and accents that would compliment them. I found this great paper from Deja Views and some fabulous accents from Making Memories and K and Company to accent them.  I created these fun collages and used a variety of word stickers, tags and buttons to complete the look. :) Another fun punching technique I learned was that the border punches from Fiskars line up perfectly and can be overlapped to create fun new borders. Here I used the Effervescence and Scallop Sentiment punches to create this fun border. What other punch combinations can you create?